


Strass Effrek

by schubox4



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Star Trek, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Shenko - Freeform, mShakarian - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-29 00:26:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11429367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schubox4/pseuds/schubox4
Summary: The crew of the USS Normandy, flagship of the Federation, deal with subspace distortions that threaten to rip their ship apart as well as personal tensions between the brilliant yet impulsive Captain, the first officer, and a young turian security officer.





	Strass Effrek

The USS Normandy sped onwards. It was the pinnacle of engineering, built with the genius of individuals from disparate cultures once at odds but now brought together. It skipped through the interstellar gulfs at far more than merely the speed of light. Its sleek hull shrugged off the waves and curves of spacetime around it like a boat cuts through the ocean swell, leaving an intangible wake echoing in the empty spaces. Within its confines many races worked away like gears in a vast machine, tirelessly adjusting and double-checking the systems. Ensigns crawled through the access tubes and scientists analyzed cryptic data and oddities from previous missions. In the rear of the ship the glow of engines illuminated the faces of engineers at their consoles, making their black-and-yellow uniforms look gray and green. It gave all their skins a bluish tinge, except the asari, who always looked like that.

The warp core was working at higher than normal efficiency, possibly because of a few new salarian ensigns that had graduated from the academy at light speed - understandable given their short lifespan and fast metabolism - and now were showing up the senior staff with fancy new techniques. Not that I’m jealous, Chief Engineer Tali’Zorah nar Rayya thought to herself as she recalibrated the phaser banks. Just that sometimes practical experience should be valued a little more, compared to theoretical breakthroughs. The engines were working fine . . . now. What if there was a power surge? Or a subspace anomaly? Systems on a starship like this needed to be able to take a great deal of stress, especially since the Federation kept pushing through new untested tech whose unpredictable failures were distressingly commonplace. Back home in the Flotilla reliability and durability were paramount; nothing was ever added without backups. No quarian captain would jeopardize lives, not to mention a valuable ship, just to have the cutting edge equipment. The quarian reputation as tinkerers was overstated, at least when it came to the ship and engines.

Tali surveyed the engine room from her vantage point at the central console. The engineers were probably twenty percent salarian, a few asari, and the rest evenly split between humans and turians. And her. A bit of a minority, quarians in Starfleet. Few of the nomadic race wanted anything to do with it, though they were highly sought after by the academy recruiters. So why was she here? The tinkerer stereotype worked in her favor here. Starfleet was always tinkering with things, often beyond what she considered advisable.

“Don’t you have people to do that for you?” a turian said, peering over her shoulder quizzically and startling her. His uniform was yellow, like hers, but the phaser at his hip said he was no engineer. 

“Shirking your duties, Vakarian? Shouldn’t you be up on the bridge?” Tali continued with her task as she talked. The ship’s phasers, new supposedly improved versions, were extremely finicky when it came to power input and needed to be carefully calibrated by hand until the computer could be taught to match their precision. It was delicate work even without Garrus Vakarian bothering her. “You never know when a gaggle of vorcha pirates will beam in and try to kidnap the captain.”

“The security chief is in with him now, I’m sure he’ll be fine. Wrex can handle anything the galaxy throws at Shepard, and if he can’t, well, I’m better off down here. Oh, I like the look of these new phaser arrays. You should let me get in there and try.”

“No thank you, you . . . gun-toting meathead. I’m doing fine . . . juust . . . okay, there goes the second bank. What are they discussing, something important?”

Garrus shrugged. “They don’t tell me anything they don’t tell you down here.”

Tali almost laughed, but with difficulty kept her focus on the keys. “From what I hear down here, you’re getting in pretty good with the captain. Always going on away missions, sitting in on senior officer meetings. Some people are probably a little jealous of your level of access.”

Garrus frowned. “Wrex doesn’t mind, he likes me there because I actually take notes on what was said-” 

“I didn’t mean Wrex,” said Tali. “I mean Commander Alenko.”

“I don’t know what you are referring to. Commander Alenko and I are on . . . professionally appropriate terms. As am I and the captain.”

“Of course! Whatever you say. Keelah! I can’t do this with you looking over my shoulder!” She shooed him away. “Go talk to the captain! I’m sure he needs something calibrated.”

Garrus lingered for a minute, looking longingly at the screen, then retreated to the turbolift, muttering something about deference to authority and platonic relationships, which Tali ignored as she attempted to force the phasers to behave within an acceptable range of error. 

“Bosh’tet. Bosh’tet. Bosh - oh, there we are.” She sighed with relief and sudden release of frustration. The main banks would need to be recalibrated every time they fired, of course, but who knew when that would be necessary; this wasn’t a warship, after all. And if they were, maybe she could let Garrus do it for her - and check it thoroughly afterwards. A hobbyist couldn’t pass for a real engineer, especially on a top-of-the line starship like the USS Normandy. But it would make him happy, at least. With Commander Alenko aboard there was little that could.

The order came down to drop out of warp, and the engineering team executed it more smoothly than machines acting out programmed routines, a testament to their training and her leadership. The deck rumbled slightly, a low sound that lasted a few seconds, before petering out. A few engineers paused what they were doing. Tali gave them a stern look. Granted, no one could see her face behind the tinted glass wall of her protective visor, but they knew her well enough to get back to their tasks. She was unphased by the rumble; quarian vessels shook much worse than that when returning to sublight speeds.

It was unusual, however, for the Normandy. She found herself checking the inertial dampeners, taking several minutes to scan through the lines of raw data. A failure could mean ripping the ship into shreds the next time they jumped to superluminal, splattering the crew into a fine mist in the process. 

The inertial dampeners were functioning well, if struggling a bit under increased demands. Tali scanned the lines of data, looking for the source of the added strain, not liking what she found. “Computer?” she said.

A calm, electronic female voice emanating from apparently nowhere spoke up at once. “As I have told you before, Chief Tali’Zorah, you may refer to me as EDI.”

“As I have told you before, I do not much care for your new personality, computer. Computer, have we come out of warp?”

“Yes, Chief Tali’Zorah. We came out of warp approximately five minutes fifteen seconds ago. We are operating on impulse engines only.”

“I see that, right in front of me, you . . . abomination! I’m also seeing anomalous figures on our current velocity.”

“Please read figures to confirm anomaly.”

Tali read them out loud.

“Figures are not anomalous. We are currently accelerating, warp velocity, relative to standard reference points.”

“What?” Tali confirmed on her screen, as did the other engineers. Some held themselves as far from the consoles as they could while still typing in anticipation of sparks.

“Alert the bridge, advise full stop, while we take a look at the warp core down here. Daniels, Adams, make sure warp and impulse engines are functioning properly and check the isolinear circuits for defects.” Adams stayed at his console while Daniels scrambled with a team of engineers to the Jeffries tubes. 

“The captain is ordering full stop impulse engines.”

Tali shouted at Engineer Adams and his fingers became a blur on the console. They waited a few seconds.

“The captain is ordering full reverse impulse engines.”

Again they waited. Tali almost thought she could hear the superstructure creaking on the edge of infrasound, but she could have been imagining it.

“The captain is ordering full reverse, warp engines, Warp 1.”

Bracing herself, Tali punched in the instructions personally.

There was a massive creaking, audible this time. Everything seemed to sway. She checked the inertial dampeners again. The stream of numbers were positive, countering a force that wanted to throw everything towards the back bulkhead as the ship accelerated forwards. But they struggled less now, which was a little reassuring.

“The captain is ordering full reverse, warp engines, Warp 2,” said EDI. “As I am also telling him now, this is extremely risky. There is a great likelihood it will cause significant structural damage.” Pause. “He is ordering full reverse, warp engines, Warp 2, along with some profanity I do not think is necessary to pass on.”

“I liked you better before you commented on our jobs, computer,” said Tali, but she hesitated. The unholy abomination of science was right. No ship was meant to go backwards at Warp 2, much less in opposition to this unexplained motive force, and the ship could end up squashed between the two like a pyjak in one of Wrex’s sandwiches. Tali hesitated, then without waiting for an order - she could always apologize later if they survived - she began the sequence to eject the warp core. 

Before she could get far into it, however, a blinking red error message emerged on the screen: Emergency Automatic Shut Down. The warp core in front of her started to dim, as did the lighting in the room, emergency power kicking in to keep essential systems running.

“What? What is this?” she yelled.

One of the salarians piped up, speaking quickly with his amphibian lips, blinking his large wet eyes in terror, “We added some safety measures. To the computers, particularly here in Engineering. Which you seemed to be lacking. Such as, a shutdown in case of hull stress, in the event of the engines exceeding recommended speeds.”

“WHAT?” said Tali. “You messed with the SAFETY PROTOCOLS!?”

“Only to make them more safe!” The salarian’s face was bathed red in emergency lighting on one side, blue from the warp core on the other.

“Bosh’tet.” Tali sighed and ran some numbers. “Well, it seems we are now drifting at Warp 3, despite the engines being off and there being no warp field to propel us above light speed. We can’t turn, or stop, since we can’t risk turning the engines back on. Well, we can stop when we eventually hit a star. Computer,” she called, “Get Donnelly down from the transporter room. He’s no use up there.” Tali’Zorah nar Rayya, Chief Engineer on the USS Normandy, paused. 

“If the warp core is shut down,” she asked the room in general, “why is it still glowing?”

 

Garrus went up to holodeck three, as he always did on his time off after Tali inevitably kicked him out of Engineering. There he punched in the code for his favorite recreational program, and walked in, carefully closing the door behind him.

It was pretty conventional for a holoprogram - the wide open moors in the north of Palaven’s largest continent, a sunny morning on a field of metallic shrubs that turned away from the sun, a day when small creatures hid in the shade. He approached a bag lying on the ground, opened it and spread its contents in the silvery grass and moss. An antique, in beautiful condition: M-98 Disruptor Rifle, military grade, exceedingly high-powered. Some might say too high-powered for hunting, and they would be right. But Garrus wasn’t interested in eating any of the creatures he shot, if holoprogram animals were even edible. 

Captain Shepard was there, too, in the distance, and as Garrus walked “forward” on the forcefield treadmill that felt so much like the stony ground of his homeworld, he seemed to get closer and closer until they stood side by side. “Oh, hey there Garrus,” said Shepard.

“Shepard,” Garrus acknowledged, unslinging the rifle from his shoulder. Shepard had a similar one, which he held cautiously, as if it were a bit unfamiliar. “Sure you can handle that thing?”

“Oh this?” he replied, gesturing with the rifle. “Can’t be all that different from a phaser, right?” This was what he usually said. Moving through his script. However, the program had a limited ability to create new dialogue to adapt to the situation.

“Try it out,” said Garrus. “See how it feels.” 

Shepard took aim at a nearby bush. “Let’s see what this baby can do.” A stream of green energy shot out of the disruptor, destroying the bush in a flash and knocking the rifle out of Shepard’s hands. “Damn!” yelled Shepard. “That thing has a hell of a kick.” Then, an improvisation: “You turians have to be crazy to use such uncivilized weapons.”

Garrus chuckled, “Well, I won’t say we aren’t crazy. This is an older model though, a few centuries old. The kind turians use now are significantly better. See, it has the nickname the ‘Widow’, but it’s an M-98. The M series disruptors featured a number of advances, at the time, in stabilization and beam coherency over longer distances, which . . .”

Shepard listened with rapt attention, nodding at appropriate times and interjecting various trivia about ancient Earth weapons when needed to continue the conversation. Above them the sun remained frozen in early-afternoon splendor over the hazy shining moor.

“Beautiful day in here!” came an unwelcome voice.

Garrus froze. Turning slowly he saw that the holodeck archway had become visible, and leaning against it with crossed arms was Commander Kaidan Alenko. Humans on the real Palaven would have needed an environmental suit, but in here the sun’s rays were just for show.

Kaidan strode into the simulation, pausing and placing one foot on a rock and leaning his elbow on his knee, hand to his chin. “Big place,” he said thoughtfully. A huge boyish grin spread across his face. 

“What are you doing here?” said Garrus. Shepard looked on, a little absently. “Ever heard of knocking?”

“Thought we need a little heart-to-heart, and I couldn’t reach you on the coms. What even is this simulation, by the way? Is this Palaven?”

“Yes,” Garrus said, looking around fondly. “Though usually the moors are covered in officers on training retreats this time of year. And it usually isn’t this holographic.”

“The Captain, though? Doctor Chakwas frowns upon recreating real people on the holodeck. Might even send you to talk to Chambers.”

“Well, it’s . . . well. What I do in my recreational time is my own business. What do you want, anyway, Commander?” A sudden thought occurred to Garrus at this point. If he had sweat glands, he would have started to sweat. “Before you answer that, maybe we should take this conversation outside . . . computer, end-”

“Belay that order, computer. Why, Lieutenant? It’s actually kind of nice in here. Your representation of the Captain is really interesting, though I think you made his waist narrower than it is, actually narrower than most humans outside cartoons . . .” Kaidan trailed off as the program moved to its next segment, and a new character trotted up eagerly.

“Shepard! Shepard! I want to come too!” said Kaidan. He scowled at Garrus. “Garrus, let’s have a shooting contest!”

“. . . Seriously, Vakarian?” said Kaidan. He stared, gaping slightly, at the diminutive hologram version of himself. 

Fake Shepard frowned. “Get out of here, Kaidan. You’re so annoying. I’m spending time with my best friend.”

“Why is he shorter?” Real Kaidan wondered aloud. “I’m already shorter than you!”

“Uhhhhhhh,” said Garrus. Thinking of nothing else to say, he continued, “uhhhhhh. . .”

Neither of them had noticed the initial rumbling as the Normandy tried to come out of warp - the forcefield floors and surroundings of the the holodeck provided additional insulation from the rest of the ship. Similarly, the sound of the superstructure groaning under the strain of the warp engines turned in reverse was covered by the whimsically whispering breezes passing softly over the moors. Their first indication that something had gone wrong was the ship switching to reserve power, shutting down nonessential areas, including the simulation. Fake Kaidan and fake Shepard and the flatlands of Palaven faded away, revealing a medium-sized grid marked room and leaving behind Lieutenant Vakarian and Commander Alenko, one confused and embarrassed and the other confused and deeply offended.

“What happened?” said Garrus, eager to change the subject.

Kaidan gave him a scathing look that said “we’ll discuss this later, but not too long later”, and tapped his communicator. “Commander Alenko to bridge, why have we lost power to holodeck three?”

“This is the bridge. We’re experiencing some difficulty coming out of warp. You should get up here, Alenko,” came the voice of Jeff Moreau, the senior helmsman, and one of the few people aboard who could refer to the Commander informally without a rebuke.

“Sure thing, Joker. Lieutenant Vakarian . . . we’ll discuss this later. In the meantime, please keep me out of your holoprograms.”

“If you could hurry it up, Commander,” Moreau broke in again, “there’s a subspace distortion which-”

His voice cut out abruptly. 

Frowning, Kaidan tapped his combadge. “Joker?” Garrus tried his as well. There was no response to either. Then they both strode over to the door as fast as they could with dignity - both thinking no doubt of the legendary fragility of the holodeck safety protocols, known to malfunction with the slightest power surge. 

One of them alone would have reached the button to open the door and cause the arch to become permanently visible, but as it was the two officers both got there at approximately the same time, and each pulled back slightly at the last moment to avoid running into each other.

In that slight hesitation, the arch disappeared. The moors of Palaven came back, glinting in a perpetual morning sun. Kaidan swore out loud, and Garrus waved his arms around frantically as he searched for the door. “Computer, end program!” Nothing happened.

“Don’t bother. They’ll send someone up to let us out,” said Kaidan. He looked around at the scenery. “At least it’s nice in here.”

Shepard strolled by, his arms swinging nonchalantly and clipping through his torso. As they watched, his face seemed to turn inside-out, revealing bulging eyeballs unconnected to anything. Holographic Kaidan slid by upside-down, balanced on his head, moving his feet as if still walking. The ground beneath them tilted slightly off the horizontal, forcing them both to stumble for their footing.

“Glitches!” Garrus groaned. “They need to get us out of here before we fall through the map.”

“That happens?”

“Barely ever.”

Kaidan tested the ground with his toe, gingerly, and grimaced.

 

“One paragade, room temperature,” Captain Shepard said, sitting down at the desk in his ready room. “Anything for you, Mr. Wrex?”

“Turian brandy,” Wrex grunted at the replicator.

“You can’t digest turian brandy, Wrex.”

“Eh, I like the challenge. And I hate that synthehol swill.” The krogan sighed, and addressed the replicator again. “One raktajino, then, I guess,” he said, glowering, “with a jacarine peel!”

The drinks appeared in a slow fizzle of light.

“Wrex, I need to talk to you about something.”

“I thought you might,” said Wrex, sipping his raktajino more delicately than he would in anyone’s presence other than the captain, “since here you are, talking to me.”

“Right. Well, it’s a bit of a personal matter. Not related to security.”

“Hah! Not sure I can help you then, Shepard.” The krogan got up to go.

He saw the look on the captain’s face and sat back down.

“See, I want every one of my officers to get along,” Shepard began conversationally, as if nothing had happened, and sipped his drink. “But lately I’ve noticed some tension, particularly between Commander Alenko and Lieutenant Vakarian. They won’t talk to me about it. I was hoping for your input, particularly about the Lieutenant. You two seem pretty close - you’ve worked together for a few years now.”

Wrex groaned. “The two of them can shut up and keep their problems to themselves. Or battle it out with honor, like the krogans do. Starfleet regulations be damned. Those regulations, by the way, also put this outside my jurisdiction, Shep . . . Captain.”

“I know. But as a friend . . .”

“As your friend, I’ll give you some advice: turian gave me a really bad rash once. Once you go dextro, you go to the infirmary. Heh. Just made that up.”

Shepard stood up and paced. He stood at the window, really a very realistic viewscreen, watching phase-shifted stars slip past. “Don’t be so crude, Wrex.”

“Come on, you wanted advice . . .” he finished his raktajino with a slurp. “Wish I had followed that advice.” He tapped the glass of the Captain’s fish tank, scaring away the fish.

“I meant more . . . ethically. Also, to be completely honest, I don’t want to hurt Kaidan’s feelings.”

Wrex shrugged. “He’s an adult.”

“And with Garrus . . . there’s concerns of my authority over him. It might be improper. You know him better.”

“I know he can be discrete, Captain, if that’s what you’re asking. Turians do it that way. Casual. Heh. I was on a turian warbird once, and - oh right, I already told you about the rash. Wasn’t from the food, you know.” A look of painful remembrance crossed Wrex’s squat heavy face. “The food . . . it did other things.”

“Centuries ago this would have been a bigger issue, just on the grounds of xenophobia. I suppose I should be grateful that it’s just an interpersonal issue. Still-”

EDI broke in, “Captain, you are required on the bridge.”

Shepard stood up to go. “I should go.”

“Captain,” nodded Wrex, also standing.

The bridge was in more of a disarray than usual. Shepard noted several sparking consoles, and Helmsman Moreau looked serious for once. Liara T’Soni, the chief science officer, was pacing around the bridge with nervous energy. She turned as Shepard walked into the room. “Captain, we seem to be stuck accelerating. Warp engines are off, but we’re going even faster than we were before.”

“There are no known instances of a vessel or object maintaining warp velocity while not being propelled by warp engines. This is highly unprecedented,” added EDI from her mobile platform, which was seated at the forward ops station. Shepard was still a little uncomfortable with an android being given a role as an officer on a starship; the fact that she was also the ship’s computer, and so essentially running the operations of herself, only served to confuse him further.

“Full stop, impulse engines,” said Shepard, slipping easily into the Captain's seat.

“Still moving, Cap!” said Joker.

Shepard hesitated. “Full reverse?” he suggested.

When reversing even the power of the warp engines failed, Shepard was nonplussed. It was almost a relief to him when main power shut down without explanation, and he eagerly stood up out of his chair again, throwing the weight of authority off his shoulders as easily as he had put it on. “Where’s Commander Alenko? Never mind. I’m going to look for him.”

Joker activated his communicator. “Captain, he’s in holodeck three, but I’m having trouble getting through. The turbolifts are shut down, so I don’t suggest-”

Shepard was already halfway into a Jeffries tube with a chortling Wrex holding the hatch open for him. “Don’t worry about it, Lieutenant Moreau. Let me know if anything changes.”

“I haven’t even told you our current situation-”

“I should go.” And he went.

The bridge was quiet for a minute.

“I feel like he just checks out during our conversations sometimes,” said Joker. “By the way, everyone, still hurtling through space, and on the current trajectory we’ll run into a small brown dwarf in Krogan space in five years, give or take.”

“Statistically, he is thirty percent more likely to assume a posture that implies he is not being attentive to the speaker when having private conversations with me,” noted EDI. She went on, “I should note that as third officer, Dr. T’Soni is now in command of the bridge, which I take will be acceptable in lieu of a direct proclamation from the commander.” Liara accepted graciously.

“Yeah,” sighed Kelly Chambers. “He never bothers to talk to me anymore, either.”

Seated in the back at the tactical station, Chief Petty Officer Jacob Taylor knew better than to try to join in the conversation.

“In the meantime, Moreau,” Liara said, sitting in the Captain’s chair. “Do what you can to try to slow us down - I’ll have Mordin and the science teams scanning subspace for disturbances that could have caused this.”

“Aye aye, Cap’n.”

“And don’t do that.”

“Yes, sir.”

 

Deputy Science Officer Mordin Solus banged his tricorder against the wall. “Confounded thing,” he muttered. “Gravitational readings all over the place! Effects on biology of crew, uncertain. Undoubtedly bad. Probably quite averse. Oh dear. I hope it's just the equipment.” He tapped his combadge. “Rana, remember to screen crew for health effects. With possible spatial disruptions, I predict structural abnormalities. In the bones perhaps. For the one with bones. I wonder how that hanar ambassador . . .”

“Sir, I’m a neurospecialist. Send them to me when their brains stop working. Just wait till Chakwa comes on shift in an hour.”

“In-gratitude! After my years of mentorship! Would you rather still be interning at the Okeer foundation? Mixing bottles of krogan gametes? Maybe preferable to you, tendencies towards megalomania, refusal to follow regulations-”

“Fine, sir, I'll see what I can do.”

“Thank you!” He returned to scowling at the tricorder.

There was a hollow tapping sound, metallic. Mordin followed it to the hatch of an access tube set into the wall. The hatch was sealed from his side, meaning someone inside would be unable to open it, and with the coms going in and out they may not be able to contact the bridge to open it. Mordin hesitated a moment then turned the wheel to open it manually.

Shepard climbed out, smiling gratefully. “Got a minute?”

“Ship’s falling apart, subspace anomalies, sassy lab techs, first officer missing, superiors emerging from the walls, of course I have a minute, Captain. Maybe I can stretch it to a minute and a half.”

“Very funny, Mordin. Any idea what's happening to the ship?”

“Not sure, not sure. Subspace anomalies- always the case isn't it? Warp drives create spacetime bubble, continuously maintained by the warp engines. Bubble moves faster than lightspeed relative to normal space, bypassing physical restrictions on accelerations within any given space. Now, warp engines off, bubble still exists, but altered...Stretched. Not a sphere but an oval. Might even stretch further, a folded corridor of space. Physical laws affected. Mass readings are off. Very strange. Never seen anything like it.”

“Bubbles? A space hallway...made of bubbles?”

“No, Captain, not at all. Perhaps you should go back to the bridge.”

“I had some more questions. Is it hard for a salarian in Starfleet?”

Mordin was surprised at the oddly placed query. “Well, no, salarians have their own academy that moves at a faster pace than asari and human ones. Salarians tend to move up the ranks quite swiftly due to native intelligence and speedy maturation. Being mostly asexual under normal circumstances also means we aren't easily distracted from our careers by relationships.”

“Really? So you aren't interested in . . . getting to know one another better.”

“No, I am not, Captain. Except platonically.”

“I had some more questions.”

“Yes? I'm quite busy right now.”

“Never mind then. See you around, Mordin.” Shepard climbed back into the tube, clambering athletically down a shaft that Mordin knew lead to engineering. 

Slightly relieved, Mordin went back to scanning with the tricorder. He tried to contact Rana again but got only static. 

This was almost as bad as the Crystalline Entity, another time the captain had overreacted. But at least he wasn’t trying to sacrifice Jacob to an ancient and immensely powerful alien this time. 

Lines of gravitational and electromagnetic distortion, seen indirectly as figures on the tiny screen of the tricorder, stretched through the ship invisibly, though Mordin kept imagining he could see them out of the corners of his eyes, refracting the corridor lights into a rainbow spectrum heavy in reds and blues. Phase-shifting. Not really happening, illusory, just a result of his mindset. He followed the lines.

A warp corridor? Stretch the ship into an infinitely thin noodle, perhaps. From their reference point, no difference. From outside, possible quite comical, possibly instantaneous travel. But that was not his specialty. Would have to talk to Tali. Luckily, the distortions seemed to be pointing him down into the bowels of the ship, towards engineering. It seemed like he would have the opportunity to discuss some things with her very soon.

 

On the holodeck Kaidan played chess with Moriarty under the swaying glow of an oil lamp. They were at sea, in an ancient wind-powered earth vessel. It was dark, and a little drizzle fell that never touched the skin but left other surfaces feeling wet. The fictional character was winning, but Kaidan still had a few good pieces left, and was making him work for it. Garrus lurched back and forth on the heaving deck of the pirate ship, a deck covered with metallic grass now drenched with salty spray. The chess pieces stayed absolutely still on the board as Garrus stumbled absurdly with the crashing waves. Above them was a gloomy night sky missing clouds in a few oddly regular oblong patches.

The smaller Kaidan, whom real Kaidan resolutely ignored, was now dressed as a cabin boy and attempting to scrub the deck to little avail as he constantly slipped and fell. He persisted even though the setting had changed; Shepard on the other hand was apparently gone, though Garrus had seen a spectral image of him floating off the bow a few moments ago with a disconnected eyeball and a face that could only be described as “asterisk-shaped”. 

Moriarty took Kaidan’s rook and grinned triumphantly. Kaidan sighed, surveying the hopeless carnage of the board, then stood up and walked over to Garrus. “Lieutenant, I think we need to talk.” Moriarty stayed frozen, grinning into the empty chair.

“Yes, sir?” Garrus nearly growled. The lurching was unsettling his stomach. Kaidan seemed less affected, balancing with a primate-ish ease and holding onto an overhead rope one handed. 

“Garrus - I’ll just call you Garrus for now, this is personal, man-to-man, you know - I can't help but notice there's a lot being unsaid right now, with you and me and the captain. Not to make any assumptions, but I'm picking up on some tension between the two of us.” The rope creaked in his hand as the ship heaved again, pitching forward into a deep trough between waves. 

“I don't know what you mean.”

“Well I can't make you talk about it, but the two of us, in regards to Shepard, I feel like if we don't talk about it we’re bound for some sort of collision-”

As if the holodeck had been listening for idioms to display literally the pirate ship shook, its bottom scraping against an unseen rock with a thrilling shudder and screech, and the entire thing came to a halt, which if Garrus recalled correctly was exactly how the “Foundered with Flint” romance holoprogram segued into its second act. They were thrown backward more gently than would have been strictly realistic, but Garrus still slipped in an undignified manner and hit the deck with a wet slap.

“Fuck,” said Kaidan, who had lost the rope but still managed to land kneeling, one hand to the ground. In the window of the captain’s cabin cozy-looking lanterns began to glow. He regained his feet easily.

Garrus sat up. “You're right,” he said miserably. “I have feelings for him.”

“Lieutenant…”

“I know it's inappropriate. But I do anyway. I know you both are close, and I don't want to get in the way of anything, I just…”

“Lieutenant!”

“We just connect on so many levels. He doesn't care when I say the wrong thing, and we can talk about guns for hours. He's so confident and accomplished and I've even grown as a person just from trying to follow his example.”

“GARRUS!”

“Just a minute, let me get this ouooououhhhhh-”

Unnoticed to Garrus the entire ship had begun listing to one side. Abruptly, the silvery grass reverted to rain-slick wood boards, and the seated turian slid helplessly, slamming into the railing. Below him a black sea churned.

“Hold still!” called Kaidan, hanging onto the handle of a closed hatchway. Carefully he began to lower himself down to where Garrus was crumpled. “We’ll talk more about this later!”

Garrus stared down at the ocean and contemplated continuing to share his feelings with Kaidan. He pulled himself upright with some difficulty, leaning heavily on the railing. “Eh, it's not real water anyway.”

He jumped. 

 

Engineer Daniels was checking isolinear circuitry in the Jeffries tubes near the warp core. She could hear Donnelly's laughter and stupid accent echoing down from a nearby tube. Damn, she wished the guy had just stayed in the transporter room. There was a reason he always somehow ended up on duty upstairs; he was a pain in the ass to work with, and Tali knew it too. But they needed every hand down here right now, and Donnelly at the very least wasn't completely incompetent when it came to the mechanical workings of the vessel.

But even with the dire circumstances at hand, his voice, with its stupid, probably affected accent and lame vaguely sexist jokes were making it hard for her to concentrate on the circuits in front of her. She paused, closed her eyes, took a breath, and counted to five. When she opened her eyes Shepard was there. 

To her credit, she didn't scream, though an audible “oop” crossed her lips the same as if she had found herself nearly walking into someone on the street. 

Shepard grinned at her. He was red in the face and a little dusty. “Hi Daniels, what's the situation down here?”

“Sir, uh, did you uh, climb all the way down from the upper decks?”

“What, did you think I'd make Joker do it?” Shepard said jovially, adding in a serious tone, “No, I wouldn't. Anyway, what seems to be the problem with the engines?”

“Not sure, sir. The warp core won’t come completely offline, and Chief Tali’Zorah thinks that might be enough to maintain the spacial distortion that’s keeping us at warp. If you look at the core it’s glowing slightly because it’s still producing a plasma stream, just a weak one. There’s not enough energy being fed into it to even keep the reaction going at low levels, however, and that’s the confusing part. She thinks EDI has it wrong and is having us check all the inputs. It’s possible that new components like the phaser banks are malfunctioning and causing some sort of feedback. But I think that’s unlikely.”

“Why?”

“My team and I have checked all the inputs, and especially on auxiliary power, there’s nothing else that can be feeding into it. And there’s more spacial and electromagnetic distortion than can be accounted for even by the warp engines working normally. Physical laws aren’t working right. The reaction is self-maintaining at a low level when it shouldn’t be. There’s a specific energy threshold for matter-antimatter reactions in the dilithium crystal matrix. The occasional stray particles meeting won’t provide enough energy. That’s why we use them, to keep the reaction controlled.” Daniels took a breath. The captain always required so much explanation.

“Oh. Could there be something wrong with the crystals?”

“No, they’re just rocks, you can’t do too much to them on a macro scale, and they can’t be flawed or we’d’ve blown up already . . .” Daniels trailed off. Before the Normandy had left port, did she see the new salarian recruits working on the warp core? She hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, it was routine to check for decrystallization and actually they had gone a long time between replacements. Had there been a new crystal installed? She would have to check with Tali, and the communicators were down. She turned to the Captain and said, “Sorry, sir, there’s something I have to discuss with the Chief.”

“Don’t let me keep you. By the way, have you seen Garrus? Or Commander Kaidan?”

“Garrus was here just a little while before this happened. He went in the direction of the holodeck. He spends a lot of time there.” She picked up her equipment and began scooting down the tube, taking the long way to avoid Donnelly. Behind her, Shepard glanced around in confusion, then picked a ladder to begin climbing up. 

“Tali!” she called as she entered the engineering deck proper. Tali glanced up from her console where her fingers had been moving with unbelievable speed. 

“Yes, Engineer Daniels, what is it?” the Chief said in a voice just a shade less violent than a snap.

“Did we get our dilithium crystals replaced in port? I’m wondering if there could be, I dunno, some sort of impurity-”

EDI replied, “New dilithium crystals were indeed taken on in port.”

This time it was a snap. “Yes, I remember, thank you computer.” Tali pondered for a moment, her fingers tapping. 

A salarian recruit at a nearby computer tentatively raised his hand. “Chief . . .”

Chief Tali’Zorah almost smiled. “I knew it. I knew it had to be one of you. What’s your name, Ensign?”

“Chorban, ma’am. It’s a long story. See, me and Palon over there-” He pointed and a salarian that had previously been edging out of the room waved back, his escape cut off. “-were working on a project in academy together with a previously undiscovered element that we thought could improve the efficiency of warp drives. We never got it to work the way we wanted, we needed something like a starship engine to test it with . . . so we substituted our own artificially grown crystals when it came time to change the Normandy’s.”

Tali’s face was unreadable behind her visor. Daniels chimed in, “You gotta know that artificial crystals can’t be used on starships. They’d break down too quickly.”

“Yes, but with the addition of Element Zero - that’s what we’re calling it, thought it was catchy for branding - we theorized that the crystal structure would be more stable. In itself that’s a pretty big innovation, right? But, but the great thing about it is that running an electric current through this element causes it to create a field that either increases or decreases the mass of objects within it depending on the direction. We thought that adding it would make the matter-antimatter reactions more efficient by decreasing the mass of the particles slightly, while the dilithium would still act to stabilize the reaction.” He glanced around, agitated. Tali, still unreadable, motioned him to go on. “But we still don’t know what’s going on here.”

“I think it’s pretty clear,” said Tali finally. “If what you’re saying is true, you decreased the threshold for reaction, and now even with the antimatter stream turned off when the slightest amount of residual antimatter encounters matter in that matrix, it generates enough energy to power the mass-reducing field. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle. You complete idiots.” She went back to the console. “The really ironic thing is that I could have just ejected the core and fixed the problem, even if we would have had to wait awhile for help to arrive. But the new safety protocols won’t let me so that.”

“Studies show that ejecting the core was in retrospect unnecessary in ninety-five percent of circumstances where it was attempted, so it’s a reasonable addition to the-” began Palon.

“Shut up. Bosh’tet.”

Daniels said, “It might be possible to counter the mass-reducing effect with a graviton emitter. A big enough one could pass a beam through the ship and be targeted precisely on the crystals themselves, and adjusted to negate the effect.”

“We don’t have the time or the materials to assemble something like that.” Tali stated.

“No, but the computer has the schematics - right, EDI? - and we could build one on the holodeck. With some tweaking of the protocols it could even produce an actual graviton beam despite being made of holo-matter.”

“But all the holodecks are shut down on auxiliary power.”

“Actually,” interrupted EDI, “There is one holodeck still running due to a malfunction at the time of the power surge.”

Daniels said, “Good. If it’s not glitching too hard up there because of the interference, I recommend we attempt it, Chief. Not much choice.”

“I agree. Let’s get moving.”

 

Mordin Solus scanned the wall. It was an ordinary bulkhead, no radiation, no subspace phenomena, gray metal with track lighting in the right places. Visually, it was fine, a bland but solid and reliable wall, Federation standard make for starships. The only real problem with it was its shape and location, jutting outwards into the corridor and curving in a mind-bending sense to leave a tall skinny gap only about a foot wide on one side. The hole itself reminded him of an optical illusion; the pattern of the carpet constricted and seemed to flow into it. The tricorder sensed nothing wrong with this other than noting the abundance of tiny stress fractures in the metal as shockingly high. It was as though the metal itself had aged a hundred years or so in a matter of hours, or was being pulled in all directions at once. Mordin suspected the latter, and he had been encountering it more and more as he moved down towards Engineering. 

This could not, he reasoned, be good.

He heard footsteps on the other side of the hole just as he was trying to work up the nerve to squeeze around it. “Keelah!” exclaimed a voice.

“Chief Tali’Zorah?” Mordin called. 

“Mordin! A moment please, I’ll try to duck around this . . .”

“That would not be advisable-” but as he tried to warn her, an impossible tall and narrow creature with spindly limbs came through the gap. A few feet past it the figure refocused itself into the chief engineer, who was squatting as if ducking under something. She looked up at Mordin then back at the hole.

“Huh,” she said, perplexed. “It was three feet tall and as wide as the corridor, from the other direction. Daniels, maybe-”

But Daniels had already followed, also emerging in a crouch as if to avoid hitting her head. She was similarly distressed when she looked back.

“Perhaps we should not attempt to pass through any more distortions we come across,” Mordin suggested.

“Unfortunately, I think there are more of them than we’re able to perceive,” said Tali. “When I walked through just now the corridor seemed to stretch back into its normal shape, relative to me.” 

“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” said Daniels. “We’re already doing what we can. Mordin, you’ve built a graviton emitter before, right?”

“Of course, back in the academy. I made a miniaturized version specifically to cheat at Dabo.”

“Can you create a functional one in the holodeck if I switch off the radiant energy safety protocols? You have more experience in particle physics than me.”

“Probably, yes, the schematics should be in the databanks for simulation purposes.”

“Good. We’ll need you.”

 

Garrus hung with his feet barely touching the water. It wasn’t wet, there was just empty space underneath, though it wasn’t clear how far he would have fallen before hitting the deck. Might have sprained an ankle or something. 

He looked up. A smallish hand held his wrist in an inhumanly tight grasp. He looked up into the face of cabin-boy-Kaidan gritting his teeth in determination. Further up, the real Commander Alenko leaned over the side, gripping a leg of his doppelganger in each hand. 

The Commander shouted down, “Garrus, you’re too damn heavy for this!”

Just then, the sunlit fields of Palaven returned and the pirate ship disappeared, causing the three to fall into the grass. Garrus’s toes remained under the surface however, and he felt himself beginning to sink beneath the map. 

He gasped, the wind still knocked out of him, “Kaidan, help!”

The fake Kaidan grabbed him by the shoulders, and yanked him up onto the ground. The force of this, however, caused the hologram to phased down to his waist in the simulated grass. He attempted to continue moving for a moment before abruptly sinking out of sight. They lay silent on the warm grass for a moment.

“Can’t say I miss him,” said Kaidan. “Though, I found his behavior . . . interesting to say the least.”

“Outside,” Garrus panted, “of the dialogues, I based his, protocols for improv, on you. Your personality. What I’ve seen of it.” 

Kaidan grinned, just a little. “I hope I’d jump off a boat to catch you.”

“I know you would. For any crew member. You’re a good person, and I’m sorry about misrepresenting you in the holoprogram.”

“It’s okay. Just don’t, you know, do it anymore. It’s still kinda weird.”

“Gotcha.”

Shepard walked up to them, a big smile on his face. “Hey, Garrus! Kaidan!” He looked around, and picked up the disruptor from the ground. “Were you thinking of a shooting contest or something?”

“Ugh, I can barely watch this anymore,” said Garrus with a wince.

Kaidan studied Shepard for a moment, then the big grin returned to his face. “Hey Lieutenant, why don’t you just tell him how you feel? For practice, you know.”

“Oh, fine,” said Garrus. He got to his feet. “Shepard, I’d like to spend more time with you. I like talking to and being around you. You make me feel good about myself and my place here, and inspire me to work even harder. I’m not sure about your relationship with Commander Alenko but I’d just like to be honest with you and tell you I’m interested. There, you happy?” he said, sitting down again. Kaidan’s grin got wider.

“Well, uh, okay, so,” Shepard began. He gestured behind him to the now-visible holodeck arch. “Maybe we should discuss this later, after we’ve fixed the problem with the ship. I mean, I’m definitely, you know, well, maybe let’s just talk about it later, if that’s okay. I think.”

Garrus froze in shocked silence as Kaidan began to giggle. 

“. . . So, maybe we should head down to Engineering now,” said Shepard, edging towards the door.

“Wait!” said Tali, stepping through. “Don’t let the holodeck shut down!” Daniels and Mordin followed her in, Daniels propping the exterior door open to prevent the arch from disappearing. 

“Did you - did you hear any of that?” Garrus asked trepidatiously.

“Of course. You talk very loudly. We heard you down the corridor.” Mordin was jabbing at the screen within the archway. “However it is not really as important as you seem to think given the imminent threat of death.”

“Oh.”

Tali worked on the datapad she had brought with her. “The safety protocols are luckily still intact in here, though the graphics module is trashed. I’ll just alter one and repair the other.” A few seconds, and then: “Good to go! It’ll allow us to create a graviton beam. I do hope none of your programs include devices that might release radiant energy, Garrus, because I did have to remove some safeties.”

“Aha,” said Mordin. In the center of the field a bulky, complicated-looking apparatus floated. It rotated, its dull metal glinting slightly in the Palaven sun, so the single aperture pointed downwards at an angle presumably towards the engines.

“Now, while it works, it IS less stable than an emitter made of normal matter, so calibrating the focus and beam coherency may be a little tricky-”

Lieutenant Garrus had been sitting on the ground in a slight daze, staring at Shepard, who seemed a little uncomfortable with the whole situation but also had a softness around his eyes - his quite beautiful eyes, Garrus would never really get used to the eyelashes but he thought there was something cute and alien about them - but looked around at the mention of calibrations. Then he noticed another figure, another Shepard, compared directly with the real one now an imperfect copy especially since the face was still a little glitchy. It was holding a disruptor, an M-98 Widow. It pointed it towards where there had once been a bush but now there was Kaidan, the Commander apparently spacing out and gazing at the hazy hills in the simulated distance. It said, “Let’s see what this baby can-”

Garrus felt, for a moment, the uniform and insignia and training and rules of Starfleet leave him as his toeclaws dug deep into the soil. His ancestors had been hunters on these plains. The glinting grass was familiar, the smell of sun and dirt, the figure before him whose small soft finger slowly began to depress the trigger. The rush of a concentrated predatory rage filled him and he leapt into the hologram Shepard at full force, barely containing himself enough to not try to rip out his throat with gnashing mandibles. They tumbled over into the grass. The rest of the crew present seemed frozen in shock as Garrus tore the disruptor away and threw it in a random direction. 

“Oh my,” said the fake Shepard from the ground, breathless. “Garrus, I love it when-” 

“SHUT UP!” 

“Yes, master.”

“Argghh,” moaned Garrus.

Captain Shepard, the real one, did not seem to know what to make of this. Kaidan simply stood in shock, then started to laugh. “Did I just almost get killed by one of my men’s sexual repression?”

“I guess,” said Shepard, coming back to himself. He kept glancing at the Shepard flat on his back on the ground. “I always thought being open about yourself was the best bet.” He stared at Kaidan, then at Garrus. “I’m sorry if I wasn’t the clearest about my intentions lately. Garrus, me and Kaidan have a complicated relationship, in that it’s kind of uncomplicated, by romantic things. At least it was. I’ve been a little unfair to him, I think-”

“No, I knew what I signed on for. And maybe it’s not what I really wanted,” Kaidan admitted. “I just wanted you.”

Shepard sighed. “Right. I know, Kaidan.”

“But that might not have been the best for either of us,” Kaidan waved his arms dramatically, “so I release you! Do what you do best. I’m not going to try to change the things I love most about you, that’d be stupid and selfish.” He turned and began to walk away. 

“Okay. Thank you Kaidan. So Garrus, if maybe you want to get some food at the replicator some time, or watch ‘Fleet and Flotilla’ with me-”

The ship rumbled and groaned, throwing them all off balance. Tali looked up from her datapad. “I apologize. While you were talking, we turned on the machine to try to save everyone’s lives. Please continue.”

“Great. So Garrus . . .”

“Yeah, I’d like that Captain.”

“-Captain! Bridge to Captain!” yelled Liara T’Soni’s voice through Shepard’s combadge. “It worked, we’ve come out of warp, but we’re further off course than we thought-” There was an odd, deep thrumming noise in the background. “We’ve encountered something, something huge, a mechanized cube with tentacles and a big red eye, it’s blasting the shields. I’ll have Donnelly beam you all to the bridge immediately.”

“Affirmative, Liara, six ready to beam up. And Lieutenant,” he caught Garrus’s eye as bright particles began to swirl around them. The turian felt his hearts seize in his chest. “This isn’t over yet.”

They disappeared in a swirl of luminous particles.


End file.
